Thursday, 24 January 2013

Ilmavoimat (Finnish Air Force)

In response to an exchange of comments on the Kit Noob Blog, here are my Finnish Winter War/Continuation War 1/144 scale Finnish aircraft. All are the work of Wg Cdr Luddite - which is why they look rather better than the guff which usually appears here. The Finns bought aircraft wherever they could and ended up with an impressively eclectic fleet. Availability of some of the more esoteric types isn't great in this scale - although I do have another kit on order... Other suitable models which are available in 1/144 scale include the Gladiator, Ms.406, Hawk75, Buffalo, Ju88. Various Soviet aircraft were captured and used against their former owners.

Above is a Hurricane built from the Sweet Models plastic kit.

Above an below is a Bf-109 - a True North metal casting with 20mm cannon barrels made from brass rod.

Finally we have a Fokker D.XXI - another True North model. The appearance of this model saved an Fw-190 from being chopped up to make a Fokker.

They look really good. For air power it's a different slant on what is usually a quite common subject. You don't often see a Hurricane and a 109 on the same team. A flying start and a flying Finnish...sorry couldn't resist.

Very nice models, and I like the livery. In assisting the author of a book on 40 Sqn RAF, I ran across some material in which the Squadron was preparing Blenheims for the Finnish Airforce during the Winter War of 1939-40. Apparently the ground crews looked very sideways at the blue swastikas they had to paint on.

I don't recall that these particular Blenheims made it to the Finns before that war ended, but I'm fairly sure they received some deliveries of the type. Maybe some survived into 1944.

You gotta admire the Finnish Army its fighting qualities, but I find it hard to decide whether its Government was pusillanimous, or very, very, astute.

Pretty accurate paint schemes there!But all sport the yellow eastern front markings used in Continuation War so even the Fokker isn't "accurate" for Winter War (also during that time black wasn't yet used in camo top). Hurri and Me109 weren't available in Winter War -oh boy if we had them at that time...!

In 1938 a license to build Blenheims in Finland was bought and Series I (15 planes) were ordered, but it wasn't until 1941-42 before they were finished.

During Winter War Finns managed to beg UK to sell first 12 Blenheims in December out of which 10 arrived in January (1 crashed and 1 dissapeared, IIRC to North Sea) followed by another 12 in February.

With the license a Series II of 30 planes was built in 1943 and in 1944 another 10 as Series III.

In 1951 two planes were basically rebuilt more or less from scratch causing the total number of Blenheims in Finnish Air Force to be either 97 or 99 depending how you count them (42 of them having been delivered from UK and 40 making it to Finland)

The plane was very much appreciated by Finns and during Winter War it flew so fast that no Finnish figher escorts could keep up with it and the speed was more or less too much for Russian fighters too (I-15, I-16 & I-153). Blenheims served throughout the Winter War (423 bombing runs) and Continuation War (around 3000 bombing runs) and were still very much in use during the Russian attack phase of 1944.

Featured post

Search This Blog

Downloads

About Me

I built my first plastic kit in about 1971 (an inevitable Airfix Spitfire IX), and can date my wargaming 'career' back to 1977 (aged 11) when in the company of my friends John and Lee I played a simple game with the Airfix (20mm) tanks we had accumulated. Soon a chance find of a couple of Don Featherstone books in the local library revealed that 'grown-ups' did this sort of thing too! I joined Wargame Developments in 1985 and have attended their annual Conference of Wargamers (COW) since 1990. I have also, together with Bob Cordery, been organising it for the past few years. My main interest has always been WW2, with a side order of various postwar conflicts. I also dabble in earlier periods. I am particularly interested in 'operational' level games.